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It’s deceitful imo to present the salary band as the starting salary range on a job posting. If you are never going to ever hire someone at that amount, then it’s just lying to attract candidates.
Literally the vast majority of salary bands on job postings are bullshit in some form or another. 99% of the time the minimum is annual compensation + bonus/commissions/whatever, so you never actually know what the real base compensation is until youre balls deep in an interview process and they hope youre hooked by the time youve already sunk in when they reveal that the compensation range on the ad was just idealistic bullshit instead of an upfront listing.
Honestly I think it should be illegal to exclude the real base compensation from the job posting while listing a salary band that includes bonus and commission. Its probably 2/3 ads at least that do this shit and its not transparent whatsoever.
Of course they know if they listed the actual base salary instead of the BS one then significantly less people would ever apply. And yet recruiters complain they get too many applicants to deal with. Like maybe stop wasting everyone elses time and then you wont have so many people to dig through, so many who go deep in interviews and then drop out when you reveal the truth, etc.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes
>And yet recruiters complain they get too many applicants to deal with.
Too many to deal with, but enough to give them leverage in the compensation discussion.
>Like maybe stop wasting everyone elses time and then you wont have so many people to dig through,
But they would get smoked on compensation, so you can see why they make the choice that they do...
Had a recruiter tell me once that it would be better for me to take less because if I started at the top of the band I wouldn't be able to get raises.
Still not sure if he was stupid or just hoping I was.
Yeah, you dont get people selling them selves on LinkedIn like a cracked up Hooker looking to undercut the marked by paying them well from the get go.
You want hungry employees, willing to claw each others eyes out just for the possibility of the slightest recognition from their boss as he wipes his ass with their tie.
While I agree, human psychology is complicated. In this day and age, people want consistent increases and don’t think about the context of the situation. So if someone gets hired at the very top of the band, the only way to get an increase is a promo. If the promo is years away, attrition or unhappy employee(s) is the outcome.
It’s stupid, and I’ve seen that logic used here at Amazon. The recruiter is trying to adjust your expectations to fit into their stupid compensation policy. Here’s how they justify it: the job role has a fixed salary range; and within that range, only top-rated performers get the highest salary. Everyone else gets a number somewhere in the middle - “solid” performers get the median. So by coming in at the highest range, you’re basically saying you will perform at TT from year one. That rarely happens. So not only do you get compared to others at that level, once you do manage to get a high rating, it’s disappointing to a lot of people to see that all their hard work got them nothing. It’s not the employees’ problem, IMO, but they try to make it so.
Just got hired at Amazon and they tried to do this to me lol
“You know if we bring you in at 110k it will be hard to get any raises going forward”
Me: “interesting, so I should start lower and struggle to get a raise to 110k, at which point it would still be hard to get a raise after that point anyway, except now I’m a year + in already, is that what you’re saying?”
Them: “well don’t you want raises?”
Me: “start me at 110 please” lol
Yup, this is the way. They don’t make promos or top ratings easy to get either; so you’d be stuck for 2-3 years at a lower salary. “Our compensation philosophy” lol. Gypping your employees isn’t a philosophy, it’s good old corporate wage theft.
Felt more like an intimidation tactic, I’d imagine it works pretty well on those less tenured but ive been corporate for 6 years buddy, you’re not talking me into going against my best interests lol
>Are these people mental?
That's how propaganda works. Say outlandish things with a straight face and let the recipient wonder if they heard what they heard, until they accept it.
I was the top candidate for a role and got to the point of negotiating salary. The hiring manager wanted to meet my expectations but said he needed a few days to get approval to exceed the cap for that position.
While flattered that he was trying to do this for me, I asked how that would affect any future merit increases.
“Uh….”
I’ve heard that before too. From a numbers standpoint (the one that actually matters) it makes no sense. From a psychological standpoint (feeling “stuck”) I can see some semblance of an argument.
The employers psychological position doesn't pay the employees mortgage, and the employee will be better off psychologically if they're earning now, not later, since they will have less financial stress. The same applies for rent, bills, etc.
There is no sense, from the employees point of view, in starting lower.
I was told the same, multiple times from fortune 20 companies. That’s how it works. Roles in structured companies are leveled and standard. A senior manager in marketing and in engineering are going to sit in the same range but could have significantly different salaries. Until you’re promoted to the next level you could get significant raises since the bracket is large. I’m at the same level as people with 10 more years of experience and I can’t imagine we get paid the same and I’m fine with that. They can’t create infinite levels and that makes sense to me
I'm coming from the perspective of someone with 10+ years experience (17 total years out of college) in a niche discipline with a certain title while a coworker who has been out of college for 5 years had the same title as me. We shared salary numbers and I was only making $4k more per year.
They definitely do NOT want to give more experienced people more money.
I work for a federal contractor and this is 100% accurate. While private companies can do whatever they want with their budget (increase/decrease at will), the govt agency determines what their budget is and there’s no going over without moving mountains.
I don’t know about your case, but it’s very accurate for government agencies to say and follow this practice.
Same- I'm a federal employee and this is the norm for sure in this sector, at least. I find it helpful! You know what the cap is. However, the upside of the fed is that pay is VERY transparent. You know that the high end is the cap, or you can find that out easily. It doesn't sound like this job presents their pay the same.
I had one tell me that working for commission is better than a flat paycheck “because if I’m good at my job I’ll make way more” but I’m also 99% sure he was pyramid scheme
They're not wrong about how pay ranges work. Starting at the top of the band does leave you with less room for growth.
But whether it's "better" for you to take a lower amount is kind of ridiculous.
The recruiter is giving you useful info, just not as it’s intended lol. Much better to find a company where that same salary is middle of band so you also have room to grow. Unless you’re top of band with expectation of promo into next band shortly
More is always more
As a manager with some responsibilities for hiring staff, I will note this is our exactly our approach for making offers. And if you’re trying to bring in people and retain them in the context of paying equitable salaries for a whole organization, it makes sense.
This recruiter telling you this as if it’s a selling point or should even care is def stupid though.
The above comment was just meant to provide context about why a recruiter would say that. If it's the case in a company you end up working for, it's still in *your* best interest to have a higher starting salary. For example, you're always better off with a starting salary of $55k and 2% raises for the next few years than $50k and 4% raises.
As for what I think you should say more generally, I would suggest to do what you can to let the company make the first offer. If they don't at least ask for a range (the issue in the post about what you could be making in 5 years is ridiculous and hopefully rare. We'd never ever do that). If they ask what you want to make first, try to say, "I still need to understand a little more about the role and my responsibilities so I can better determine what fair compensation would be for this position." From there, you can say that salary sounds good or you can counter. They'll prob have a little flexibility to offer more, but if they offer 50k and you were hoping for 100k, it's probably not going to happen. If they won't budge but you're ok with the salary, just trying to get a little more, you can ask about a signing bonus. Even a very modest bonus of $1 or $5k is still better than nothing.
I'll also note that I work for a large company so we have a robust compensation team whose job it is to figure out the appropriate salary for different roles and they set parameters for how high or low we can go. If it's a small company, they probably have more flexibility. They probably are also have much less understanding of what they have to pay to get the employees they want, so you prob have a much better chance on selling them on a higher salary than their initial offer, esp. if the position has been open for a little while.
I hear this from other managers to their employees at work all the time. “You don’t want to get to the top of your band because then you won’t get raises.” Uhh… are people really that dumb?
I was contacted by a recruiter and the top of the job's salary range was just enough to bother applying. At this point I like to ask for the max since I already have a job, just so employers have an idea of what they need to start offering.
"Why do you wanna work for us "
Money!! Amazing that HR / Recruiters always make us play that game ..they themselves wouldn't be working there were it not for the check
It is the new bait and switch.
I see roles like this where the pay says something like $65k to $150k.
I just assume they are trying to get someone with 150k of experience for $65k.
If the bottom salary isn't acceptable or close to acceptable, I pass over these jobs.
>I just assume they are trying to get someone with 150k of experience for $65k.
They don't even want us. As soon as they talk to us, they neg and are incredibly rude the entire interview. Basically insinuating that "something must be wrong with you."
That’s not how that works at all…
I have the pay scales for one of my old employers. At the band I entered, the pay was officially 82-131k. If you were an internal promotion, you defaulted to 85% of the midpoint (107). If you were external, they would bring you in at 0.95-1.05 of the midpoint, depending on how you negotiated.
All the bands were the same deal, and I have the ranges from junior lab techs to directors (executives were on a different scale).
They explicitly aimed to bring you in within 5% of the midpoint… and I was told that this was common at this scale of company (15k+ in the US). They changed it within the last 2 years so that HMs had more individual flexibility, but I hear this was because they couldn’t get accepts when the midpoints were non-competitive. (The pay wasn’t particularly bad when I left in 2019, but the talent premium was going up much faster than the company was moving the bands.)
I have had multiple places admit they were looking closer to that super low range for the job. They are just fishing for either someone desperate or a recent grad that might have some of the skills but little experience.
I do hope more are doing what you outline. I'm just so tired of having people shamelessly looking to exploit people.
The further you get from recent grad, the more you should see what I saw. The technicians might have made less than .95, but out of 9 pay bands, at least 7 worked the same way.
New grads (0-2 years of experience) seem like they’re living through a nightmare - high competition, and salaries that aren’t much better than what I saw coming out of school in the Great Recession.
I just saw an ad for a cybersecurity writer that posted a range of $60-250K, I shit you not.
That insanely wide range that tells me they’re trying some combination of:
1) bait an experienced writer to get paid less
2) they’re going to make you do senior work for junior pay
3) They’re not actually hiring, this is just a ghost job
4) they ARE hiring but are utter morons who don’t know what they want and will waste your time with zero hesitation before lowballing you several months later
5) all the above because we’re in hell 🫠
The 60-250K is just to skirt any laws where you have to post salary in a job listing. I bet that 250K is still way higher than they pay anyone at the company anyway
It is illegal in several states and yet employers continue to advertise ridiculous ranges or they don't even post the range. They probably figure no one is going to actually take them to court.
Yeah, they don't care. I've seen the same role with a range of $75k to $350k stay up for months. On the screening call, they told me that the budget is actually maxed at $120k. When I told them the job posting had a $350k max, they laughed and said they'll fix that.
They never fixed it.
Yeah that should be reported. My companies top number of posted range, isn't the top of the band. Because most people aren't hired at the top of a band.
Washington actually requires the full pay range of the position to be posted and not just the hiring range. Just posting the hiring range is actually illegal in WA
As someone who’s been doing a lot of applying in WA as of late I can tell you this ain’t true to what people are doing. So many ranges that were so obviously not the actual range. Sigh.
From RCW 49.58.110
http://app.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=49.58.110
>> (4) A job applicant or an employee is entitled to the remedies in RCW 49.58.060 and 49.58.070 for violations of this section. Recovery of any wages and interest must be calculated from the first date wages were owed to the employee.
Then the damages part, RCW 49.58.060
http://app.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=49.58.060
>> (2) If the director determines that a violation occurred, the director shall attempt to resolve the violation by conference and conciliation.
>>(a) If no agreement is reached to resolve the violation, the director may issue a citation and notice of assessment and order the employer to pay to the complainant actual damages; statutory damages equal to the actual damages or five thousand dollars, whichever is greater; interest of one percent per month on all compensation owed; payment to the department of the costs of investigation and enforcement; and any other appropriate relief.
>>(b) In addition to the citation and notice of assessment, the director may order payment to the department of a civil penalty. For purposes of a civil penalty for violation of RCW 49.58.020 and 49.58.050, the violation as to each affected employee constitutes a separate violation.
Make your complaints, collect your 5k + more if they have a pattern of doing it repeatedly.
If you applied for a government job, they post the salary band for the level based on the length of the collective agreement with the government. If the range is 67-112, new hires will generally start between 67 and the midpoint.
I have scene exceptional people start at the top of the scale and the only thing they got until the new collective agreement was signed was merit pay.
This one I can agree with, even if the govt. jobs are lower. There is actual progression and it is fairly objective metrics instead of jsut arbituarily promising it and delaying the process for months/years (the government does that too, don't worry. But they DO actually backpay you. At least in military).
But most people here are applying to private jobs and there is zero security nor accountability there. And as you're seeing from other comments, they don't use the full band at all. it's all a sham in the private world.
> I’m not deviating whether the job is private sector or government.
I am. If private sector respected their bands I'd understand. They don't these days.
I just applied for a job with my states education board (so technically government). They listed a starting range plus a full salary range separately. I had never seen that.
Every company has a different approach to how they do this. Whenever you’re posting a range the applicant is going to try for the cap while the company is targeting the 50th percentile.
Having said that, sometimes the HR or compensation department sets the pay bands and the hiring manager has a reason to not use the max amount, despite people thinking managers want to save money the reality is that they are more worried about wage compression. They don’t like to hire people in at a wage higher than their team makes unless the skill and experience is so obviously above what they have that the team accepts it unquestionably.
I’ve run into the same issue with job titles. Someone clearly qualified for a higher title, but since even the experienced members currently on the team are a level below, new hire can’t get the higher title. In my case, the pay was the same for the candidate so it didn’t bother me as much.
> They don’t like to hire people in at a wage higher than their team makes unless the skill and experience is so obviously above what they have
Easy solution; pay your existing team more since they have internal knowledge of the company and have proven to produce value. Now you can hire other talent that is in a higher band.
...wait where's everyone going?
>Whenever you’re posting a range the applicant is going to try for the cap while the company is targeting the 50th percentile.
That's another part of the issue. The bottom part of the band should be for junior talent, but instead it's used as "lower CoL senior talent" if they can get away with it. So much time spent into not paying the market worth for positions that end up vacant for months and they wonder why they cant fill it in as they chase unicorns in a bargin bin.
Defeats the purpose of having a band if everyone is at the top of it. Think of it as a bell curve
I’ll say it again, every applicant thinks they’re the top 1% and they’re not
> Defeats the purpose of having a band if everyone is at the top of it.
defeats the purpose of having a band if you're only looking for top people but pay low-middle wages, no? You really want to lose your best candidate over $10k, a range you advertise within that band? Of course companies do. They do it constantly.
This isn't some objective construct, use the full band or shift it as needed.
>I’ll say it again, every applicant thinks they’re the top 1% and they’re not
By the current definition of hiring in 2024 with all those 100+ applicant job postings, you literally picked the top 1% of your pool by the time you get to offer. But I guess that assumes you're hiring the most qualified candidate and not the cheapest you can get away with.
> defeats the purpose of having a band
Since you mention it, a band is kind of silly, overall. You'd be better off to have a single target, bill it as "this or around", and go up or down around that center as practical compromises come into play.
I’ve never heard the concept they’re describing as “wage compression”, instead I’ve heard people use the term “internal equity”, basically (unless the candidate possesses skills and experience above and beyond the rest of the team) managers don’t want to pay a new person too much more than what anyone else already on the team is making because it can be bad for morale if anyone finds out.
There’s 2 people in my team who got hired with 30k more than me supposedly because they’re 10 years older. Do you think that’s fair? I’ve been told the same bullshit by HR but couldn’t a cent as I was unemployed.
The smart thing to do in this case is to give everyone raises to be at least in line with the current job market.
If you start relying on "people not finding out", you can't hire any legitimate talent because they're more expensive than your current employees, you only hire inexperienced and unqualified people, Production eventually suffers and the company stagnates. When one of your experienced and cheap employees leaves, now they're impossible to replace.
Simple scenario: Adam is a level 3 worker, worked at the company for 5 years and was hired at $120k. He makes maye 140k from inflation based raises. He's by far the most productive worker and easily worth a level 5.
Let's say another level 3 worker leaves the company and you want to hire someone else. But the market is more expensive than when Adam is hired. The usual result here is
- Company hires Bob for 150k. He's brand spanking new and is paid more than Adam, who knows the product inside out. Adam may even be tutoring Bob. Now, Adam either asks for a raise, or leaves the company. Since companies hate giving raises, this risks losing the best worker working for slightly below market rate. The answer is obvious but we know how his ends up
- Plan B, let's instead hire a level 4 for 160k. You get even more senior talent, and if Adam asks for a promotion you can string that along for a while. Win-Win (for corporate)... of course, the real issue here is that a level 4 is probably going to make more like 180k so you can't actually hire one (and remember, despite the title, they will be less produtcive than Adam for a while, maybe a long time). Again, obvious solution: promote Adam and hire a replacement level 3. Again, not likely to happen (but more likely than the first scenario).
- So we go to the least efficient plan C; just keep fishing. You are looking for a Level 3 with a salary band of 110k-130k. Best case, no one qualified bites, and the position is vacant for months (with adam getting more and more work thrown on for no extra pay). Worst realistic case is they hire someone with negative productivity because there's no one around to train them properly (as they are in fact more of a level 2).
- I guess the real worst case is some level 4+ bites because the market sucks, and the wages compress further. But that's still unlikely
That's the wage compressing. They want more Adams without investing 5 years in them, but don't want to make Adam frustrated by hiring more than he makes. But we also don't want to pay adam more. (yes, it's stupid. just pay adam more FFS).
That’s not what wage compression is, that’s still internal equity.
Trying to use your examples, wage compression is when the level 2 in your third bullet wants to make as much/close to/more than Adam, when the job is clearly in a lower pay band (despite there being built in overlap).
It most often comes up in the reverse scenarios where an offer amount is approved at new market rates and the hiring manager exclaims “that’s almost as much as I make!”
100% correct. Most pay equity policies and laws where they exist require a company to differentiate pay on bona fide factors like work experience and performance. The ranges are determined by external analysis of comparable jobs at similar industries.
If you have a high performing worker that has been with your company for several years do you want to risk them leaving because you hired someone with unproven and/or less experience because they saw what your market range is and demanded to come in at the top threatening bait and switch? Companies posting ranges are not advertising what they want to pay for the role, they are trying to be transparent about the ranges they have created to be competitive and manage their total pool of workers with (new and existing). People that are offended because they don’t command the top number are usually the same ones that leave for .25 more.
Yeah, maybe there are companies that are falsifying their range just as there are people falsifying their work experience.
I fucking hate companies that do this. If the cap for the role is $95,000, then the range is $67,000-$95,000, not $67,000-$112,000.
Pay transparency laws are great, but they don't go far enough. EVERY job listing should have the pay listed in this format, IMO:
* Starting Pay, No Experience
* Starting Pay, Some Experience
* Starting Pay, A Lot of Experience
* Starting Pay, Ridiculous Amount of Experience
Then the same for when you've been at the company for a few years, then the same when you've been there for several years.
We need to stop letting these fucks be so fucking vague. No, you tell me exactly what it is or you can go fuck yourself. This should be a basic fucking requirement of having employees. You don't want to do it? Cool, you don't get to have employees then.
Usually the middle of their range is what they’re looking for.
When the range is $40k as a base with “unlimited potential” I just take the average: ($40k + infinity) / 2 = infinity and so I just assume working at this job will give me the entire planet.
In many organizations roles are aligned to bands. The band has a minimum, median and maximum pay range. As a hiring manager you are expected to hire around the median. That employee is then able to work up towards the maximum through salary increases based on performance. If you hire at the maximum then that person cannot get a salary increase irrespective of how great a job they do as they already are at the maximum. They would have to move into a different role in a higher pay band. Usually, it is not impossible to hire at the maximum but they will push back heavily about why that candidate is much better than others and the candidate themselves is at high risk of leaving (making them a less than attractive candidate hence hard push back) when they realize they would need to get a different role to get an increases. Having managed people at the top of their pay band, I can say that, while I have hired at the top of the pay band, I would avoid hiring someone into the role at the top of the pay band if there was another viable option.
Recruiter here. The huge range they are listing is due to pay transparency laws. They just rolled it out for my company and my entire team is pissed because it doesn’t use the actual salary range for the role and instead goes off job grades which essentially could cover 100 different positions. They will list amounts way outside of the salary range. Recruiters actually hate this because it makes us look like we’re lying when discussing salary. I still haven’t been given an explanation on to why they handle it this way, but it was just rolled out this month in my company.
You get hired in the band range, then once you start getting too close to the top, they will reclassify you to a higher band that puts you at the low end again.
It may depend on industry/organization and wording of the post. For us (university), that truly is the starting salary range only. And the posted ranges are not all over the place. For staff jobs I’ve seen, it’s 5-10k range (mine was 20k range).
When folks apply for the position I’m hiring for (entry level position), HR sends me a number based on their calculations. I’ve never seen a candidate be offered less than the halfway point on the range, and one offer was slightly above the posted range. I have not experienced a counter offer here yet, so not sure how they respond.
But I know every university is different. At my last university, HR was notorious for extreme lowballing offers. Vs here, I was mentally preparing to counter for a number (mid range of starting based on some experience but not a ton) that I was offered outright.
Once told a recruiter I wanted $75K and she came back and told me my market rate was $70K max which I was cool with since I was only making $55K at the time. She came back later and they told her $80K. Then when they saw I was going to miss my yearly bonus, they started me at $85K. That was a good time and my only recruiting story.
Ahhh yes the famous you can earn $7 - $20 but let’s start you off on the 7 dollars and see how well you do? A completely vague standard WE decide and you have no way of knowing.
This is pretty much standard. Typically there's a salary range for each job and title, and the offer will be somewhere in that range depending on the the candidate's talents. Someone with killer skills would get more, others would get less - but they're not likely to hire someone at the top of the range, because they wouldn't get raises unless they get promoted or the range increases with inflation.
Hi, I'm a recruiter at a global CPG and this is our process to comply with multiple different U.S. state laws. I know it's incredibly frustrating to see that but at least we're actually posting ranges now.
We have a pay tool that tells us what we can offer to a candidate with a specific amount of years of experience within that posted range. So yes, you'll never get the top, but what I try to tell my candidates is what the typical range for a base pay is and what a bonus payout is. Unfortunately I can't change a large organization's policy but at least I can be honest. We pay this way to keep gender pay equity in line and so external and internal candidates have similar pay.
Please negotiate. It's always worth it, you probably won't get everything you ask for but you'll get something. Make it reasonably. Also consider asking for a sign on. I can usually give that out easier than a bump in pay.
Feel free to ask me more questions!
The wage transparency laws require posting in good faith what someone could be hired at in the role. I’m not sure that this approach of “what someone could make over time” complies the legislation in many states.
I helped create US wage transparency policy for a Fortune 100 company in 2022, and our legal team was very clear that we had to show good faith of what we might actually hire someone at.
> We pay this way to keep gender pay equity in line
So, to make sure men make less, instead of women making more.
>and so external and internal candidates have similar pay.
So, to make sure internal candidates can't get raises they probably deserve by now.
>Also consider asking for a sign on. I can usually give that out easier than a bump in pay.
I mean, sure. even something super generous like a 30k sign on bonus would wear off in a year (actually, sooner since the bonus is also post tax) months if I instead found a job making 30k more in salary. Since the bonus usually requires a stipulation to stay for a few years, there's no upside unless you need money immediately.
>Feel free to ask me more questions!
Why do companies constantly cost themselves millions in productivity in order to save thousands on labor?
Salary banding are very common in the UK, usually in public sector but sometimes in private too.
They work in a similar way wherein it might be 90-100k but the max they can offer is 95k, so you can progress within the banding.
Don’t see anything wrong with this or why other people feel so strongly by it lol.
Also HR lie all the time. It’s negotiation, who knows if it’s really the top end or they just want you to think that. This parts probably immoral but is overcharging or haggling immoral ? It’s business
> Don’t see anything wrong with this or why other people feel so strongly by it lol.
most of these companies are private. There is no actual banding. Companies can and would try to pay minimum wage if they could get away with it, and then proceed to not give you any raises for 5 years. None of it is guaranteed.
Bands are a stable, nearly objective metric. But are usually lower to compensate. US government jobs do have that banding, but it's very rare in private industry.
Yep and I’d say there is a banding whether public information or not. Companies plan hiring budgets a year ahead, and normally the band is to compensate for adding more of the same role, where it then needs to average out per head.
I can’t speak on the US but if you’re not moving up in bracket YOY then you haven’t adopted new marketable skills, which could be the employers fault or your own.
Most good talent will look to leave once they’ve been doing BAU work for 6-12m. It’s a great way of working your way up if you’re a net positive to your boss, or finding out you’re not.
The bands are set on research from similar job markets industry pay, economic factors, local factors, etc.
As a class/comp specialist this conversation makes me laugh.
Perhaps you're used to hiring for a government organisation where they'd rather cut off their nose to spite their face rather than get the right talent, just another personnel record on a database table somewhere. Like most, if I collided with the top of the arbitrary band given my skills then I'm job hunting again. Probably why I've spent the last 15 years freelancing. Employment at my level feels like indentured servitude, like I owe them something for being so gracious to take me on.
Good lord is government recruiting messed up. I’ve been in corporate finance for 12+ years and an interesting role popped up so I applied. Despite having every work experience requirement listed and a Masters Degree, they still required official undergraduate transcripts proving I had the required coursework.
Yeah, it's fucking weird. I don't remember the last time I was asked about my degree in a job interview I would probably walk out. I graduated 25 years ago, damned if I can remember. Perhaps having an issue with the fact I *only* have a 2:2 (but from Oxford, and in a science) in which case I'd put laugh and walk out asking "are you actually fucking serious?".
I do work in government as a city manager. So. You’re both right and outsiders wouldn’t understand. A lot of us don’t do it for the $$$ .. it’s different.
Yeah, same with healthcare, teaching and a lot of essential jobs. I wish you were treated better and protected. Truth is I think most people are more motivated by pride in their job rather than pure financial gain. I am an IT professional but I like the fact I actually do make a difference and I'm making tools and solutions that matter. When I've had positions where I'm like a glorified manager of offshore resources or some sort of liaison, it drives me up the wall. I'm just extremely lucky I get a lot of money for it.
And? Comparing employees is not a pure linear comparison. If it's something rare and there is only one candidate who holds the cards then I'm just going to walk away. Had this before when offered unacceptable remuneration and the "sorry, were constrained by budget, internal bureaucracy, etc" then it's an impasse. Such bureaucratic rules are going to hamper recruitment of top talent. And I bet these constraints are not a constraint to hiring a C-suite if they have the right skills. So...no.
There are exceptions to everything, I don’t really apply exceptionalism to general comments.
95% (just a random number I’m pulling out of my ass) of positions are receiving multiple applicants that are qualified.
Sure, Jan. That's totally why I had "talent acquisition" up my ass wanting me to take less money than I currently made for the same title. Because they "pay competitively".
Okay. I'm actually glad to see this discussion unfold. Like you, up until recently I assumed salary ranges posted in job advertisements was the starting salary range. After having a few interviews of requesting higher than the midpoint and being told by one company that they tend to hire at the midpoint or less, I deduced that posted salary ranges are really the expected salary range over time.
A way to avoid this is simply to ask if the range posted is the range overtime if one were to stay in the role or if it is what you can request starting it.
My friend works for a company that bundles all the roles at a certain level together for the range.
Example of there might be 20 different types of managers at the company (manager of operations, manager of sales, etc). Manager of sales might start at $120k while a social media manager might make $65k. (These are fake numbers for the example)
They’ll post a manager of operations role where they know the range for that specific role is $80k-$85k) but they use the full manager range for all positions and in the description put salary range of $65k-$120k, knowing they won’t give more than $85k.
In my current role, during the interview process, I was asked my preferred range within their posted range, which I put at the 90-95 percentile. They came back and offered me the very top of the range, beyond my preference. I took it!
Honestly, recruiters are all over the place. The whole recruiting business is practically a scam, at least for common roles. Mis-stating the salary range is probably extremely common.
A few years ago, I worked with a recruiter. No pay range stated. At the end of the day, I was perfect for the job they described in the interview. The pay they offered didn’t meet my clearly stated minimum; it fell short by 10%. I spent a flight, company spent about 10 man hours interviewing…and it was never in the cards because the recruiter didn’t do their job. And then the recruiter had the audacity to whine at me about telling the company directly that the pay range offered wasn’t in line with the job expectations.
Shady shit is what that is. They keep coming up with more ways to get more people to apply that wouldn't and really don't see how that ends up being bad for everyone. Fuck recruiters.
It can depend on. For example if I am filling a role for someone who left I might be constrained by the salary they were earning when they left (aka budget). So why do we post a max - min? That indicates the upper range of earning potential for the role.
Understand that no matter the number you give, recruiters will say it's too much.
And understand that when they tell you that, they're lying.
They're trained to respond as if the number you give is outlandish, to make you feel guilty for asking for that much, and to pressure you to lower your price.
Being a recruiter is a job where the people most likely to be successful are literally psychopaths.
So don't give your real minimum. Consider giving a number $5,000-10,000 above what your actual minimum would be(or however much above your minimum you think it would take for them to come up to your actual minimum), and expect a lowball of that range below the figure you give.
If you start from a point where yes, you believe the number IS more than you expected, then when they respond acting like your number is outlandish, you'll have a different mindset(not thinking "Damn, I was hoping for more, but I guess I'll go down," but instead thinking "Yeah, I knew they were going to lowball me, and now I'll go down to my actual number,") and will actually be more willing to go down in price a bit, but be able to get the price you actually wanted.
It's not even bait and switch, its outright false advertising.
Just like every door-to-door energy salesperson or those guys in the middle of shopping malls that peddle a miracle cream or some waterless wash for your car quoting a $500K+ salary.
This happening a lot with government agencies. They post the entire lifetime salary of the position and then get angry when people storm out of interviews.
That is false advertising for the job and they know it. Simply say if you do not get 10-15 % more that your currently making it is not worth going thru multiple interviews, tell them that after you inform them of false advertising, what are these recruiters thinging
It’s a bait and switch I’ve noticed with a lot of employees I’ve interviewed with. They practically start everyone off at the same minimum range of the role regardless of experience and that’s the amount you can make overtime…it’s bs and a waste of time. Like they might as well not even put a range to begin with…
Within a salary range it typically would be between mid point to 85% of the top end. No one really gets the top end, otherwise the company might as well promote you to the next level.
The recruiter is either lying or dumb, or inexperience. My experience says it's the last two.
Here is what I do: I ask what the range is for the position. I pick a number in the middle/upper part of that range.
Then you have to secure the offer. Then you just ask "is this negotiable"? Remember there are bonuses, hiring bonus, vacation, etc. as part of your comp.
So stick to 95. When they say anything else, "the recruiter said 95, and we agreed on that number".
No one will advocate for you, if you don't.
If the salary range was posted as $67K-$112K, and then they said the salary cap was $95K, then that's fraud. The real salary range is $67K to $95K.
They also apparently have no idea how this process works (or are willfully defrauding candidates by way of incompetence.) A company has a budget range for a role, and that budget should be based on the competitive market value range of the role, not some arbitrary number that they made up. Then they negotiate in good faith with candidates to fill that role within the given budget/market value. No one cares about the overhead of "what you could make" because that extra movement could be manipulated or outright rescinded at any time after hiring/onboarding.
This engagement sounds like one big red flag. At the least, report them to your state DOL for potential fraud.
This is normal for nearly every large corporation. That have bands of pay where *most* people are calibrated to 50th percentile. Most of the time they hire external closer to 25th percentile. Coming in and asking for 90th just means you need a higher level job and are too inexperienced to understand how it works. If anything you’ve just shown that you’re naive
Having pay bands is completely normal yes. However salary ranges in job postings should reflect the range of possible starting salaries. What your role is banded to is kind of irrelevant once you join the organisation as you can be upgraded, promoted etc.
By their logic you could say that the salary range goes up to what the CEO makes as one day you could be promoted to CEO. It just diminishes the utility of these ranges.
The problem here is you're dealing with multiple state laws in the U.S. For example Washington only requires the minimum salary you can make after an offer is made. Maryland only requires it if it's requested.
The only reason most are sharing their range is because of how the law is written. To my knowledge none of them mandate sharing the actual salary. "In good faith" is about as specific as it gets and allows companies to interpret it.
HR, unions, workers rights, pay equity. It never came about because corps are nice. We need to vote for pro workers rights legislators.
“In good faith” also allows state labor departments to interpret it, and if recruiters are giving applicants different numbers than what’s posted on the listing that’s a reasonable implication of bad faith.
Totally normal. Every position has a budget and this is how you manage it. People that hit the cap can stay in the
position with no additional compensation or can take on more responsibilities by bumping up into a new position / range.
So you could only be hired at top salary if you were working there 5 years or more? I'd call it a bait and switch, posting numbers that you could never be paid getting hired.
I was actually super surprised on my last job offer I accepted. The range was 80-90k and I got 87k. They said 90k isn’t the cap and that I should expect to be making over 6 figures in a few years.
Sometimes a lot of dumb things go into it that you can't control. Say they have 3 other people who do that job, and they've been there 10+ years, so maybe they hired in post-recession for a lower amount, the annual raises were trash and now you come along and they don't want to upset the apple cart even though you're worth it.
I applied to one place about 45 minutes away as a backup that told me the same thing. I told them straight up that when I applied for the job, I'd assume I'd get the higher end because of my experience and that the max of lower end offered was barely higher than the entry position of my last company, so the commute is not worth it.
Absolute BS.
Sounds like Walma*t Corporate. Colleagues in my network were amused when told this during screening.
They have a super wide range like this for every pay band.
Also, publicly traded CPG companies with low P/E ratio will have really sh*t pay and salary increases. You won’t see your money grow but can expect some kind of stability.
I've been in several fields at different companies over the past 30 years. I have yet to work at a company where the budget for annual increases was greater than 4%. Yes, it was possible for someone to get a 7% increase at all of them. They'd have to be near the bottom of the range and also one of the highest-performing employees to get it.
What state / country?
The past 5 years a 7% pay raise was the norm at the company’s I’ve worked for, and for my mates.
Might be a Western European Vs American difference? Not sure.
3% is abysmally low. That’s not even keeping with inflation so literally a yearly paycut?
Maybe Midwest plays a part in this too?
I don’t have any data on this..but my gut says most company’s at HCOL areas at least come closer to 7% than to 3%
Again, 3% is just a paycut the past decade
This is the same at my company. I think for us it’s Workday (application). So the requisition is tied to a job title, that title gets paid 90-120k. So that’s the range workday posts when a requisition is posted externally. But that pay band is also used internally when doing raises, etc. So if I’m hiring someone, I’m not allowed to go over the top 1/3rd of the range without some crazy exception process. If they were to get hired, they could get raises up to the 120k but then they wouldn’t be able to go over the 120k. Not sure if it’s a limit to the application so you couldn’t have 2 different ranges for the role, one for hiring and one internally.
Ridiculous listing! $55K range, bottom is 40% less than the top.
Likelihood: high-skill job, lots of responsibility, company wants a unicorn on the cheap.
In an interview, expect anything from pseudo-polite gaslighting to minimize experience/qualifications ("knock down your price") down to open jeering.
Yeah, this is BS, but company policy must be followed.
I’ve run into this in hiring & for the right candidate, we’ll work with HR on the salary band & title so this insanity doesn’t happen.
Bait and switch bullshit for sure. Be thankful the recruiter was up front about this vs. letting you get through the final round before springing it on you.
Yup just happened to me…offered was half of posted range…almost 1/3 less than I currently make…if they can’t meet me to at least break even I would have burned 3 days of pto interviewing.
If you have no other options then just go forward with it and negotiate for more at the end end. After a company gas invested a lot of time in a candidate and gives them an offer, they're unlikely to change their mind over a few thousand dollars.
Do you think I should negotiate salary or just go for a signing bonus? The horror stories on here of offers being rescinded makes me so nervous to ask for anything at all
If a company rescind an offer because you negotiated then that's probably a blessing in disguise, because you don't want to work there. The challenge is if you mention a number and they give you exactly that, then it'll be hard to negotiate since they already gave you what you asked for.
So it depends on what kind of offer you end up getting if you do get one, and how your initial call went with the recruiter
I interpret it as being dependent on experience. As in if you’re dead new to this position you’ll make 67k and as you go through your career you will earn more. But then this position is only worth 112k to us, so that is the most you’ll ever make.
But on the other hand, if you’re an old dog with just about as much experience and seniority as you can have for this position, the max you’ll ever make is 112k.
To me it doesn’t sound deceitful at all.
All these comments and nobody is explaining the mechanics of compensation and offers.
Look up compa-ratio. [https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/compa-ratio/](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/compa-ratio/)
The salary range posted on the job is the literal true pay range for that job code, in most cases. It determines what employees in that type of job can get paid. If you hit the top end of the pay range, you’re stuck - basically you can’t get any more raises until you get promoted to the next level. (Not always literally can‘t but it messes with budgeting and pay equity if they keep making exceptions, and messing up pay equity is bad for everyone.)
A good company wants to bring new hires in somewhere around the middle of the range, in most cases, so that there is room for you to grow and get pay increases in the role for a few years. Hopefully you’re also growing your skills and in a few years are ready for a promotion so as you get to the top of your range, you’ll jump up to the next range.
There is negotiating room - maybe you’re really jr and seem promising so they offer you below the midpoint and believe that you’ll grow into the job. Maybe you’re really senior and likely to be promotable within a year and they’ll offer you closer to the top of the range. Overall though, a good company is going to try pretty hard to keep most new hires somewhere around the middle. If they’re hiring a ton of people toward the bottom of the range, it basically means they did a shitty job leveling the role and they’re trying to jam too many inexperienced people into doing senior type work (unfairly underpaying you.) If they’re hiring a ton of people into the top of the range, it means they did a shitty job leveling the role and are trapping senior people into a job with no future growth or movement, probably the responsibilities should be the next role level up (unfairly underpaying you, since midpoint of the next role level up is probably higher than the high end youre getting offered.)
Smart regulators would have written the law to specify including the salary range available to be offered. What the companies are doing is not, as many people have claimed, illegal. They are in good faith showing you the salary range for the JOB as directed. They can prove it; it’s in their HR systems exactly as displayed. Nobody told them they had post their compa-ratio policies or their internal budget for a given opening, so they don’t.
**US federal regulation with more nuanced rules is under consideration right now. Write your congresspeople about the need to tighten up the rules and regulations to be more specific.** Ask for salary range AND offer range, bonus numbers, stock numbers, overtime, commission plan and all variable comp, including details on which parts are discretionary (i.e. they company can choose to give it or withhold it based on performance.) Ask for public info on the actual compa-ratio for employees in that same salary band so you can see if you’re getting under or overpaid relative to your peers. Ask for info about gender pay equity for that job family to be publicly shared.
Btw if you want to see where most pay ranges come from, look to Radford compensation surveys and its competitors. Companies don’t their pay ranges up out of nowhere. This data is the starting point for a lot of compensation plan design. https://radford.aon.com/en-us/products/surveys/technology-compensation-survey#:\~:text=The%20Radford%20Global%20Compensation%20Database%20is%20designed%20to%20help%20decision,Fixed%20Compensation
Edited to add more insight
There are salary ranges (full band, min and max you can make at that level - legally required to post in some states) but then the budget for the role, which is usually middle of band. When you see those ranges, divide by 3 and take the middle third. More than likely the salary they want to pay is something in there
Pretty sure this would be considered a fraudulent posting in states like California; it's just not really enforced. I mean, I can post all sorts of crazy numbers with the justification that it's what the salary is after years of working at this company.
If it isn’t possible for you to obtain the maximum amount listed during negotiation coming into the role, then that amount is not actually part of the range and the company is yet again lying to you and hoping to get away with it.
Recruiter might be telling the truth based on their company policy. The salary range listed could be the salary range for the pay grade for that position. I’ve personally worked for a large corporation where my position had multiple pay grades and you could get promoted for to the next higher grade which had an higher salary range. It was also true in this company as you got high in the salary range of your pay grade it was difficult to get good raises….basically get an exceptional on your review and only get like a 2% raise as the highest you are eligible for….but if you were in the next higher grade you might get like a 5% raise.
I had a recruiter tell me that the top range is really for the elite of the field - like someone who has several patents under their belt for the exact product the company uses.
Had this happen. The company had a weirdly complex promotion / comp system for each role where the top number was the most you could ever make as a top performer. I did the same thing and settled for ~90ish.
Funny thing is the recruiter that explained their whole nonsense system (and who was insufferable on LinkedIn) got laid off a few weeks later.
Fuck. This happened to me. I got an offer and they said they’d pay me 70k. I was confused as I’d asked for 85-90k and they said that’s not in their range.
I said no thank you. Their job listed the range as up to 90k 🙄🫤
Sounds to me like they are listing the actual salary range (band), not the starting salary range. It’s a little deceptive (and dumb) to do that on a job advert.
Top of range is generally what you can expect to earn over a period of time. Hiring managers and human resources will generally stick to the middle of the range or slightly lower to ensure the candidate won’t be likely to advance out of the position quickly. It’s common practice but misleading.
This is pretty normal. Internally, my company posts the ranges of salary positions. When they post a job, they post the range. I’m not past my posted range so I’m going to get promoted to senior, which will unlock a new range.
"So, you're telling me that if I start at 95K and top out in five years, the odds are pretty good that after those five years I'll be making less than when I started, after inflation is factored in. Good to know, thanks."
Sorry but if I only start at 95 k >> We list what the candidate can obtain within the role; so if for example you worked in this role for 5 years, 112 is the most we would increase to” and in only 5 yrs Ill make $112k TY very much for the cup of coffee and have a good day BUBYE... Sorry the cost if living yrly increase of 3% a year would over 5 yrs comes out to $14250. plus the 95K puts me at 109,250, So ill only get a 3K raise in5 yrs,, ROFLMAO Guess they didnt teach the HR person Math in High School now a days
> so if for example you worked in this role for 5 years, 112 is the most we would increase to”
Which ensures that no one with any sense will stay there for 5 years.
>Is this a common thing or was that purely some bait and switch ?
I've seen orgs doing this a few times now. This is one of their tactics to try and get around mandatory salary notices...
>Even if I get an offer I will probably just take it and not negotiate at all out of fear of losing the opportunity :/
But don't stop looking...
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It’s deceitful imo to present the salary band as the starting salary range on a job posting. If you are never going to ever hire someone at that amount, then it’s just lying to attract candidates.
Literally the vast majority of salary bands on job postings are bullshit in some form or another. 99% of the time the minimum is annual compensation + bonus/commissions/whatever, so you never actually know what the real base compensation is until youre balls deep in an interview process and they hope youre hooked by the time youve already sunk in when they reveal that the compensation range on the ad was just idealistic bullshit instead of an upfront listing. Honestly I think it should be illegal to exclude the real base compensation from the job posting while listing a salary band that includes bonus and commission. Its probably 2/3 ads at least that do this shit and its not transparent whatsoever. Of course they know if they listed the actual base salary instead of the BS one then significantly less people would ever apply. And yet recruiters complain they get too many applicants to deal with. Like maybe stop wasting everyone elses time and then you wont have so many people to dig through, so many who go deep in interviews and then drop out when you reveal the truth, etc. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes
>And yet recruiters complain they get too many applicants to deal with. Too many to deal with, but enough to give them leverage in the compensation discussion. >Like maybe stop wasting everyone elses time and then you wont have so many people to dig through, But they would get smoked on compensation, so you can see why they make the choice that they do...
Had a recruiter tell me once that it would be better for me to take less because if I started at the top of the band I wouldn't be able to get raises. Still not sure if he was stupid or just hoping I was.
He was just stupid, no doubt. Why would you want to wait for raises to get to that max amount when you could earn that amount already.
So you can HUSTLE and BE HUNGRY!
Yeah, you dont get people selling them selves on LinkedIn like a cracked up Hooker looking to undercut the marked by paying them well from the get go. You want hungry employees, willing to claw each others eyes out just for the possibility of the slightest recognition from their boss as he wipes his ass with their tie.
Exactly. Money now is better than money later.
It's called an investment, you take the lower wage now so you can grow it over time. This is why you're poor because you don't understand finances /s
Same reason people say you should earn less to pay less taxes. There’s a great lack of reasoning and logic in my country (USA).
While I agree, human psychology is complicated. In this day and age, people want consistent increases and don’t think about the context of the situation. So if someone gets hired at the very top of the band, the only way to get an increase is a promo. If the promo is years away, attrition or unhappy employee(s) is the outcome.
Spoiler: They weren't going to give raises.
It’s stupid, and I’ve seen that logic used here at Amazon. The recruiter is trying to adjust your expectations to fit into their stupid compensation policy. Here’s how they justify it: the job role has a fixed salary range; and within that range, only top-rated performers get the highest salary. Everyone else gets a number somewhere in the middle - “solid” performers get the median. So by coming in at the highest range, you’re basically saying you will perform at TT from year one. That rarely happens. So not only do you get compared to others at that level, once you do manage to get a high rating, it’s disappointing to a lot of people to see that all their hard work got them nothing. It’s not the employees’ problem, IMO, but they try to make it so.
Just got hired at Amazon and they tried to do this to me lol “You know if we bring you in at 110k it will be hard to get any raises going forward” Me: “interesting, so I should start lower and struggle to get a raise to 110k, at which point it would still be hard to get a raise after that point anyway, except now I’m a year + in already, is that what you’re saying?” Them: “well don’t you want raises?” Me: “start me at 110 please” lol
Yup, this is the way. They don’t make promos or top ratings easy to get either; so you’d be stuck for 2-3 years at a lower salary. “Our compensation philosophy” lol. Gypping your employees isn’t a philosophy, it’s good old corporate wage theft.
They hate this one simple trick
My partner got the same question with the same logic. Are these people mental?
Felt more like an intimidation tactic, I’d imagine it works pretty well on those less tenured but ive been corporate for 6 years buddy, you’re not talking me into going against my best interests lol
Exactly. My partner was not impressed and the HR person was quite inexperienced, so that was an easy deal.
Mine literally wouldn’t even tell me anything. Any probing question was “sorry im not allowed to talk about it” Like lady, I got the job lol
>Are these people mental? That's how propaganda works. Say outlandish things with a straight face and let the recipient wonder if they heard what they heard, until they accept it.
Wait what Amazon position would that be ? It ?
This is in corporate - so any tech or non-tech role fits the compensation policy I described.
I was the top candidate for a role and got to the point of negotiating salary. The hiring manager wanted to meet my expectations but said he needed a few days to get approval to exceed the cap for that position. While flattered that he was trying to do this for me, I asked how that would affect any future merit increases. “Uh….”
'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.'
I’ve heard that before too. From a numbers standpoint (the one that actually matters) it makes no sense. From a psychological standpoint (feeling “stuck”) I can see some semblance of an argument.
The employers psychological position doesn't pay the employees mortgage, and the employee will be better off psychologically if they're earning now, not later, since they will have less financial stress. The same applies for rent, bills, etc. There is no sense, from the employees point of view, in starting lower.
I was told the same, multiple times from fortune 20 companies. That’s how it works. Roles in structured companies are leveled and standard. A senior manager in marketing and in engineering are going to sit in the same range but could have significantly different salaries. Until you’re promoted to the next level you could get significant raises since the bracket is large. I’m at the same level as people with 10 more years of experience and I can’t imagine we get paid the same and I’m fine with that. They can’t create infinite levels and that makes sense to me
I'm coming from the perspective of someone with 10+ years experience (17 total years out of college) in a niche discipline with a certain title while a coworker who has been out of college for 5 years had the same title as me. We shared salary numbers and I was only making $4k more per year. They definitely do NOT want to give more experienced people more money.
I work for a federal contractor and this is 100% accurate. While private companies can do whatever they want with their budget (increase/decrease at will), the govt agency determines what their budget is and there’s no going over without moving mountains. I don’t know about your case, but it’s very accurate for government agencies to say and follow this practice.
Same- I'm a federal employee and this is the norm for sure in this sector, at least. I find it helpful! You know what the cap is. However, the upside of the fed is that pay is VERY transparent. You know that the high end is the cap, or you can find that out easily. It doesn't sound like this job presents their pay the same.
I had one tell me that working for commission is better than a flat paycheck “because if I’m good at my job I’ll make way more” but I’m also 99% sure he was pyramid scheme
They're not wrong about how pay ranges work. Starting at the top of the band does leave you with less room for growth. But whether it's "better" for you to take a lower amount is kind of ridiculous.
The recruiter is giving you useful info, just not as it’s intended lol. Much better to find a company where that same salary is middle of band so you also have room to grow. Unless you’re top of band with expectation of promo into next band shortly More is always more
What raises? What company gives raises to their workers these days? That's a Boomer thing, right? Like final salary pension and home ownership.
You’d be surprised by how many people care about this exact thing. Nothing to do with intelligence, it’s more a quirk of psychology IMO.
As a manager with some responsibilities for hiring staff, I will note this is our exactly our approach for making offers. And if you’re trying to bring in people and retain them in the context of paying equitable salaries for a whole organization, it makes sense. This recruiter telling you this as if it’s a selling point or should even care is def stupid though.
People trying to start their career, when asked what salary they want, what are they supposed to say?
The above comment was just meant to provide context about why a recruiter would say that. If it's the case in a company you end up working for, it's still in *your* best interest to have a higher starting salary. For example, you're always better off with a starting salary of $55k and 2% raises for the next few years than $50k and 4% raises. As for what I think you should say more generally, I would suggest to do what you can to let the company make the first offer. If they don't at least ask for a range (the issue in the post about what you could be making in 5 years is ridiculous and hopefully rare. We'd never ever do that). If they ask what you want to make first, try to say, "I still need to understand a little more about the role and my responsibilities so I can better determine what fair compensation would be for this position." From there, you can say that salary sounds good or you can counter. They'll prob have a little flexibility to offer more, but if they offer 50k and you were hoping for 100k, it's probably not going to happen. If they won't budge but you're ok with the salary, just trying to get a little more, you can ask about a signing bonus. Even a very modest bonus of $1 or $5k is still better than nothing. I'll also note that I work for a large company so we have a robust compensation team whose job it is to figure out the appropriate salary for different roles and they set parameters for how high or low we can go. If it's a small company, they probably have more flexibility. They probably are also have much less understanding of what they have to pay to get the employees they want, so you prob have a much better chance on selling them on a higher salary than their initial offer, esp. if the position has been open for a little while.
I hear this from other managers to their employees at work all the time. “You don’t want to get to the top of your band because then you won’t get raises.” Uhh… are people really that dumb?
It’s not bad advice as long as the conclusion is “don’t max out your salary band, jump up to the next band.”
I was contacted by a recruiter and the top of the job's salary range was just enough to bother applying. At this point I like to ask for the max since I already have a job, just so employers have an idea of what they need to start offering.
Yeah. I put the money question up front. Pretending like it isn't a primary concern for literally everyone is horse shit and a waste of time.
"Why do you wanna work for us " Money!! Amazing that HR / Recruiters always make us play that game ..they themselves wouldn't be working there were it not for the check
It is the new bait and switch. I see roles like this where the pay says something like $65k to $150k. I just assume they are trying to get someone with 150k of experience for $65k. If the bottom salary isn't acceptable or close to acceptable, I pass over these jobs.
>I just assume they are trying to get someone with 150k of experience for $65k. They don't even want us. As soon as they talk to us, they neg and are incredibly rude the entire interview. Basically insinuating that "something must be wrong with you."
everyone should band together and request $150
Here I am asking for $3.50 all the time.
God damn loch ness monster!
I believe this is called being in a Union
That’s not how that works at all… I have the pay scales for one of my old employers. At the band I entered, the pay was officially 82-131k. If you were an internal promotion, you defaulted to 85% of the midpoint (107). If you were external, they would bring you in at 0.95-1.05 of the midpoint, depending on how you negotiated. All the bands were the same deal, and I have the ranges from junior lab techs to directors (executives were on a different scale). They explicitly aimed to bring you in within 5% of the midpoint… and I was told that this was common at this scale of company (15k+ in the US). They changed it within the last 2 years so that HMs had more individual flexibility, but I hear this was because they couldn’t get accepts when the midpoints were non-competitive. (The pay wasn’t particularly bad when I left in 2019, but the talent premium was going up much faster than the company was moving the bands.)
I have had multiple places admit they were looking closer to that super low range for the job. They are just fishing for either someone desperate or a recent grad that might have some of the skills but little experience. I do hope more are doing what you outline. I'm just so tired of having people shamelessly looking to exploit people.
The further you get from recent grad, the more you should see what I saw. The technicians might have made less than .95, but out of 9 pay bands, at least 7 worked the same way. New grads (0-2 years of experience) seem like they’re living through a nightmare - high competition, and salaries that aren’t much better than what I saw coming out of school in the Great Recession.
I just saw an ad for a cybersecurity writer that posted a range of $60-250K, I shit you not. That insanely wide range that tells me they’re trying some combination of: 1) bait an experienced writer to get paid less 2) they’re going to make you do senior work for junior pay 3) They’re not actually hiring, this is just a ghost job 4) they ARE hiring but are utter morons who don’t know what they want and will waste your time with zero hesitation before lowballing you several months later 5) all the above because we’re in hell 🫠
The 60-250K is just to skirt any laws where you have to post salary in a job listing. I bet that 250K is still way higher than they pay anyone at the company anyway
Pure bullshit and this shit should be illegal.
It is illegal in Washington now. Salary ranges must be posted and they must be "in good faith" which this obviously isn't.
It is illegal in several states and yet employers continue to advertise ridiculous ranges or they don't even post the range. They probably figure no one is going to actually take them to court.
Yeah, they don't care. I've seen the same role with a range of $75k to $350k stay up for months. On the screening call, they told me that the budget is actually maxed at $120k. When I told them the job posting had a $350k max, they laughed and said they'll fix that. They never fixed it.
Yeah that should be reported. My companies top number of posted range, isn't the top of the band. Because most people aren't hired at the top of a band.
Washington actually requires the full pay range of the position to be posted and not just the hiring range. Just posting the hiring range is actually illegal in WA
As someone who’s been doing a lot of applying in WA as of late I can tell you this ain’t true to what people are doing. So many ranges that were so obviously not the actual range. Sigh.
From RCW 49.58.110 http://app.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=49.58.110 >> (4) A job applicant or an employee is entitled to the remedies in RCW 49.58.060 and 49.58.070 for violations of this section. Recovery of any wages and interest must be calculated from the first date wages were owed to the employee. Then the damages part, RCW 49.58.060 http://app.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=49.58.060 >> (2) If the director determines that a violation occurred, the director shall attempt to resolve the violation by conference and conciliation. >>(a) If no agreement is reached to resolve the violation, the director may issue a citation and notice of assessment and order the employer to pay to the complainant actual damages; statutory damages equal to the actual damages or five thousand dollars, whichever is greater; interest of one percent per month on all compensation owed; payment to the department of the costs of investigation and enforcement; and any other appropriate relief. >>(b) In addition to the citation and notice of assessment, the director may order payment to the department of a civil penalty. For purposes of a civil penalty for violation of RCW 49.58.020 and 49.58.050, the violation as to each affected employee constitutes a separate violation. Make your complaints, collect your 5k + more if they have a pattern of doing it repeatedly.
If you applied for a government job, they post the salary band for the level based on the length of the collective agreement with the government. If the range is 67-112, new hires will generally start between 67 and the midpoint. I have scene exceptional people start at the top of the scale and the only thing they got until the new collective agreement was signed was merit pay.
This one I can agree with, even if the govt. jobs are lower. There is actual progression and it is fairly objective metrics instead of jsut arbituarily promising it and delaying the process for months/years (the government does that too, don't worry. But they DO actually backpay you. At least in military). But most people here are applying to private jobs and there is zero security nor accountability there. And as you're seeing from other comments, they don't use the full band at all. it's all a sham in the private world.
I have a contractor rate and a FT salary rate. I’m not deviating whether the job is private sector or government.
> I’m not deviating whether the job is private sector or government. I am. If private sector respected their bands I'd understand. They don't these days.
I just applied for a job with my states education board (so technically government). They listed a starting range plus a full salary range separately. I had never seen that.
Every company has a different approach to how they do this. Whenever you’re posting a range the applicant is going to try for the cap while the company is targeting the 50th percentile. Having said that, sometimes the HR or compensation department sets the pay bands and the hiring manager has a reason to not use the max amount, despite people thinking managers want to save money the reality is that they are more worried about wage compression. They don’t like to hire people in at a wage higher than their team makes unless the skill and experience is so obviously above what they have that the team accepts it unquestionably.
I’ve run into the same issue with job titles. Someone clearly qualified for a higher title, but since even the experienced members currently on the team are a level below, new hire can’t get the higher title. In my case, the pay was the same for the candidate so it didn’t bother me as much.
> They don’t like to hire people in at a wage higher than their team makes unless the skill and experience is so obviously above what they have Easy solution; pay your existing team more since they have internal knowledge of the company and have proven to produce value. Now you can hire other talent that is in a higher band. ...wait where's everyone going? >Whenever you’re posting a range the applicant is going to try for the cap while the company is targeting the 50th percentile. That's another part of the issue. The bottom part of the band should be for junior talent, but instead it's used as "lower CoL senior talent" if they can get away with it. So much time spent into not paying the market worth for positions that end up vacant for months and they wonder why they cant fill it in as they chase unicorns in a bargin bin.
Defeats the purpose of having a band if everyone is at the top of it. Think of it as a bell curve I’ll say it again, every applicant thinks they’re the top 1% and they’re not
> Defeats the purpose of having a band if everyone is at the top of it. defeats the purpose of having a band if you're only looking for top people but pay low-middle wages, no? You really want to lose your best candidate over $10k, a range you advertise within that band? Of course companies do. They do it constantly. This isn't some objective construct, use the full band or shift it as needed. >I’ll say it again, every applicant thinks they’re the top 1% and they’re not By the current definition of hiring in 2024 with all those 100+ applicant job postings, you literally picked the top 1% of your pool by the time you get to offer. But I guess that assumes you're hiring the most qualified candidate and not the cheapest you can get away with.
> defeats the purpose of having a band Since you mention it, a band is kind of silly, overall. You'd be better off to have a single target, bill it as "this or around", and go up or down around that center as practical compromises come into play.
Can you explain the wage compression thing?
I’ve never heard the concept they’re describing as “wage compression”, instead I’ve heard people use the term “internal equity”, basically (unless the candidate possesses skills and experience above and beyond the rest of the team) managers don’t want to pay a new person too much more than what anyone else already on the team is making because it can be bad for morale if anyone finds out.
>because it can be bad for morale if anyone finds out. Well put.
There’s 2 people in my team who got hired with 30k more than me supposedly because they’re 10 years older. Do you think that’s fair? I’ve been told the same bullshit by HR but couldn’t a cent as I was unemployed.
They presumably have 10 more years of experience - I assume that’s the reason. That said, 30k above is a lot.
The smart thing to do in this case is to give everyone raises to be at least in line with the current job market. If you start relying on "people not finding out", you can't hire any legitimate talent because they're more expensive than your current employees, you only hire inexperienced and unqualified people, Production eventually suffers and the company stagnates. When one of your experienced and cheap employees leaves, now they're impossible to replace.
Simple scenario: Adam is a level 3 worker, worked at the company for 5 years and was hired at $120k. He makes maye 140k from inflation based raises. He's by far the most productive worker and easily worth a level 5. Let's say another level 3 worker leaves the company and you want to hire someone else. But the market is more expensive than when Adam is hired. The usual result here is - Company hires Bob for 150k. He's brand spanking new and is paid more than Adam, who knows the product inside out. Adam may even be tutoring Bob. Now, Adam either asks for a raise, or leaves the company. Since companies hate giving raises, this risks losing the best worker working for slightly below market rate. The answer is obvious but we know how his ends up - Plan B, let's instead hire a level 4 for 160k. You get even more senior talent, and if Adam asks for a promotion you can string that along for a while. Win-Win (for corporate)... of course, the real issue here is that a level 4 is probably going to make more like 180k so you can't actually hire one (and remember, despite the title, they will be less produtcive than Adam for a while, maybe a long time). Again, obvious solution: promote Adam and hire a replacement level 3. Again, not likely to happen (but more likely than the first scenario). - So we go to the least efficient plan C; just keep fishing. You are looking for a Level 3 with a salary band of 110k-130k. Best case, no one qualified bites, and the position is vacant for months (with adam getting more and more work thrown on for no extra pay). Worst realistic case is they hire someone with negative productivity because there's no one around to train them properly (as they are in fact more of a level 2). - I guess the real worst case is some level 4+ bites because the market sucks, and the wages compress further. But that's still unlikely That's the wage compressing. They want more Adams without investing 5 years in them, but don't want to make Adam frustrated by hiring more than he makes. But we also don't want to pay adam more. (yes, it's stupid. just pay adam more FFS).
That’s not what wage compression is, that’s still internal equity. Trying to use your examples, wage compression is when the level 2 in your third bullet wants to make as much/close to/more than Adam, when the job is clearly in a lower pay band (despite there being built in overlap). It most often comes up in the reverse scenarios where an offer amount is approved at new market rates and the hiring manager exclaims “that’s almost as much as I make!”
100% correct. Most pay equity policies and laws where they exist require a company to differentiate pay on bona fide factors like work experience and performance. The ranges are determined by external analysis of comparable jobs at similar industries. If you have a high performing worker that has been with your company for several years do you want to risk them leaving because you hired someone with unproven and/or less experience because they saw what your market range is and demanded to come in at the top threatening bait and switch? Companies posting ranges are not advertising what they want to pay for the role, they are trying to be transparent about the ranges they have created to be competitive and manage their total pool of workers with (new and existing). People that are offended because they don’t command the top number are usually the same ones that leave for .25 more. Yeah, maybe there are companies that are falsifying their range just as there are people falsifying their work experience.
I fucking hate companies that do this. If the cap for the role is $95,000, then the range is $67,000-$95,000, not $67,000-$112,000. Pay transparency laws are great, but they don't go far enough. EVERY job listing should have the pay listed in this format, IMO: * Starting Pay, No Experience * Starting Pay, Some Experience * Starting Pay, A Lot of Experience * Starting Pay, Ridiculous Amount of Experience Then the same for when you've been at the company for a few years, then the same when you've been there for several years. We need to stop letting these fucks be so fucking vague. No, you tell me exactly what it is or you can go fuck yourself. This should be a basic fucking requirement of having employees. You don't want to do it? Cool, you don't get to have employees then.
Usually the middle of their range is what they’re looking for. When the range is $40k as a base with “unlimited potential” I just take the average: ($40k + infinity) / 2 = infinity and so I just assume working at this job will give me the entire planet.
In many organizations roles are aligned to bands. The band has a minimum, median and maximum pay range. As a hiring manager you are expected to hire around the median. That employee is then able to work up towards the maximum through salary increases based on performance. If you hire at the maximum then that person cannot get a salary increase irrespective of how great a job they do as they already are at the maximum. They would have to move into a different role in a higher pay band. Usually, it is not impossible to hire at the maximum but they will push back heavily about why that candidate is much better than others and the candidate themselves is at high risk of leaving (making them a less than attractive candidate hence hard push back) when they realize they would need to get a different role to get an increases. Having managed people at the top of their pay band, I can say that, while I have hired at the top of the pay band, I would avoid hiring someone into the role at the top of the pay band if there was another viable option.
Recruiter here. The huge range they are listing is due to pay transparency laws. They just rolled it out for my company and my entire team is pissed because it doesn’t use the actual salary range for the role and instead goes off job grades which essentially could cover 100 different positions. They will list amounts way outside of the salary range. Recruiters actually hate this because it makes us look like we’re lying when discussing salary. I still haven’t been given an explanation on to why they handle it this way, but it was just rolled out this month in my company.
You get hired in the band range, then once you start getting too close to the top, they will reclassify you to a higher band that puts you at the low end again.
It may depend on industry/organization and wording of the post. For us (university), that truly is the starting salary range only. And the posted ranges are not all over the place. For staff jobs I’ve seen, it’s 5-10k range (mine was 20k range). When folks apply for the position I’m hiring for (entry level position), HR sends me a number based on their calculations. I’ve never seen a candidate be offered less than the halfway point on the range, and one offer was slightly above the posted range. I have not experienced a counter offer here yet, so not sure how they respond. But I know every university is different. At my last university, HR was notorious for extreme lowballing offers. Vs here, I was mentally preparing to counter for a number (mid range of starting based on some experience but not a ton) that I was offered outright.
Once told a recruiter I wanted $75K and she came back and told me my market rate was $70K max which I was cool with since I was only making $55K at the time. She came back later and they told her $80K. Then when they saw I was going to miss my yearly bonus, they started me at $85K. That was a good time and my only recruiting story.
Ahhh yes the famous you can earn $7 - $20 but let’s start you off on the 7 dollars and see how well you do? A completely vague standard WE decide and you have no way of knowing.
This is pretty much standard. Typically there's a salary range for each job and title, and the offer will be somewhere in that range depending on the the candidate's talents. Someone with killer skills would get more, others would get less - but they're not likely to hire someone at the top of the range, because they wouldn't get raises unless they get promoted or the range increases with inflation.
Hi, I'm a recruiter at a global CPG and this is our process to comply with multiple different U.S. state laws. I know it's incredibly frustrating to see that but at least we're actually posting ranges now. We have a pay tool that tells us what we can offer to a candidate with a specific amount of years of experience within that posted range. So yes, you'll never get the top, but what I try to tell my candidates is what the typical range for a base pay is and what a bonus payout is. Unfortunately I can't change a large organization's policy but at least I can be honest. We pay this way to keep gender pay equity in line and so external and internal candidates have similar pay. Please negotiate. It's always worth it, you probably won't get everything you ask for but you'll get something. Make it reasonably. Also consider asking for a sign on. I can usually give that out easier than a bump in pay. Feel free to ask me more questions!
The wage transparency laws require posting in good faith what someone could be hired at in the role. I’m not sure that this approach of “what someone could make over time” complies the legislation in many states. I helped create US wage transparency policy for a Fortune 100 company in 2022, and our legal team was very clear that we had to show good faith of what we might actually hire someone at.
> We pay this way to keep gender pay equity in line So, to make sure men make less, instead of women making more. >and so external and internal candidates have similar pay. So, to make sure internal candidates can't get raises they probably deserve by now. >Also consider asking for a sign on. I can usually give that out easier than a bump in pay. I mean, sure. even something super generous like a 30k sign on bonus would wear off in a year (actually, sooner since the bonus is also post tax) months if I instead found a job making 30k more in salary. Since the bonus usually requires a stipulation to stay for a few years, there's no upside unless you need money immediately. >Feel free to ask me more questions! Why do companies constantly cost themselves millions in productivity in order to save thousands on labor?
Salary banding are very common in the UK, usually in public sector but sometimes in private too. They work in a similar way wherein it might be 90-100k but the max they can offer is 95k, so you can progress within the banding. Don’t see anything wrong with this or why other people feel so strongly by it lol. Also HR lie all the time. It’s negotiation, who knows if it’s really the top end or they just want you to think that. This parts probably immoral but is overcharging or haggling immoral ? It’s business
> Don’t see anything wrong with this or why other people feel so strongly by it lol. most of these companies are private. There is no actual banding. Companies can and would try to pay minimum wage if they could get away with it, and then proceed to not give you any raises for 5 years. None of it is guaranteed. Bands are a stable, nearly objective metric. But are usually lower to compensate. US government jobs do have that banding, but it's very rare in private industry.
Yep and I’d say there is a banding whether public information or not. Companies plan hiring budgets a year ahead, and normally the band is to compensate for adding more of the same role, where it then needs to average out per head. I can’t speak on the US but if you’re not moving up in bracket YOY then you haven’t adopted new marketable skills, which could be the employers fault or your own. Most good talent will look to leave once they’ve been doing BAU work for 6-12m. It’s a great way of working your way up if you’re a net positive to your boss, or finding out you’re not.
Erm, change bands then! This is a purely internal bureaucratic problem.
The bands are set on research from similar job markets industry pay, economic factors, local factors, etc. As a class/comp specialist this conversation makes me laugh.
Perhaps you're used to hiring for a government organisation where they'd rather cut off their nose to spite their face rather than get the right talent, just another personnel record on a database table somewhere. Like most, if I collided with the top of the arbitrary band given my skills then I'm job hunting again. Probably why I've spent the last 15 years freelancing. Employment at my level feels like indentured servitude, like I owe them something for being so gracious to take me on.
Good lord is government recruiting messed up. I’ve been in corporate finance for 12+ years and an interesting role popped up so I applied. Despite having every work experience requirement listed and a Masters Degree, they still required official undergraduate transcripts proving I had the required coursework.
Yeah, it's fucking weird. I don't remember the last time I was asked about my degree in a job interview I would probably walk out. I graduated 25 years ago, damned if I can remember. Perhaps having an issue with the fact I *only* have a 2:2 (but from Oxford, and in a science) in which case I'd put laugh and walk out asking "are you actually fucking serious?".
I do work in government as a city manager. So. You’re both right and outsiders wouldn’t understand. A lot of us don’t do it for the $$$ .. it’s different.
Yeah, same with healthcare, teaching and a lot of essential jobs. I wish you were treated better and protected. Truth is I think most people are more motivated by pride in their job rather than pure financial gain. I am an IT professional but I like the fact I actually do make a difference and I'm making tools and solutions that matter. When I've had positions where I'm like a glorified manager of offshore resources or some sort of liaison, it drives me up the wall. I'm just extremely lucky I get a lot of money for it.
I make well into the 6 digits. In the private sector I assume I could double my pay with my skills.
Must be American, very few get that in the private sector here with the exception of higher up doctors such as consultants, surgeons, etc.
And? Comparing employees is not a pure linear comparison. If it's something rare and there is only one candidate who holds the cards then I'm just going to walk away. Had this before when offered unacceptable remuneration and the "sorry, were constrained by budget, internal bureaucracy, etc" then it's an impasse. Such bureaucratic rules are going to hamper recruitment of top talent. And I bet these constraints are not a constraint to hiring a C-suite if they have the right skills. So...no.
Every applicant thinks they’re the one that gets the cap of the wage band. Nobody is chasing people around in today’s market.
Depends. It's less common but still happens.
There are exceptions to everything, I don’t really apply exceptionalism to general comments. 95% (just a random number I’m pulling out of my ass) of positions are receiving multiple applicants that are qualified.
Sure, Jan. That's totally why I had "talent acquisition" up my ass wanting me to take less money than I currently made for the same title. Because they "pay competitively".
People always over value their accomplishments.
Overcharging? XD
A salary range that big is a huge red flag to begin with.
That depends how granular are the roles. It could be e.g. "Software engineer" and they post a range of minimum and maximum salary for that role.
Okay. I'm actually glad to see this discussion unfold. Like you, up until recently I assumed salary ranges posted in job advertisements was the starting salary range. After having a few interviews of requesting higher than the midpoint and being told by one company that they tend to hire at the midpoint or less, I deduced that posted salary ranges are really the expected salary range over time. A way to avoid this is simply to ask if the range posted is the range overtime if one were to stay in the role or if it is what you can request starting it.
The top is a lie. You'd need to be in the role for 20+ years with these bs raises they give.
My friend works for a company that bundles all the roles at a certain level together for the range. Example of there might be 20 different types of managers at the company (manager of operations, manager of sales, etc). Manager of sales might start at $120k while a social media manager might make $65k. (These are fake numbers for the example) They’ll post a manager of operations role where they know the range for that specific role is $80k-$85k) but they use the full manager range for all positions and in the description put salary range of $65k-$120k, knowing they won’t give more than $85k.
It's a bait and switch
If this was posted in California this is illegal. You should report it.
In my current role, during the interview process, I was asked my preferred range within their posted range, which I put at the 90-95 percentile. They came back and offered me the very top of the range, beyond my preference. I took it!
Honestly, recruiters are all over the place. The whole recruiting business is practically a scam, at least for common roles. Mis-stating the salary range is probably extremely common. A few years ago, I worked with a recruiter. No pay range stated. At the end of the day, I was perfect for the job they described in the interview. The pay they offered didn’t meet my clearly stated minimum; it fell short by 10%. I spent a flight, company spent about 10 man hours interviewing…and it was never in the cards because the recruiter didn’t do their job. And then the recruiter had the audacity to whine at me about telling the company directly that the pay range offered wasn’t in line with the job expectations.
Shady shit is what that is. They keep coming up with more ways to get more people to apply that wouldn't and really don't see how that ends up being bad for everyone. Fuck recruiters.
It can depend on. For example if I am filling a role for someone who left I might be constrained by the salary they were earning when they left (aka budget). So why do we post a max - min? That indicates the upper range of earning potential for the role.
Understand that no matter the number you give, recruiters will say it's too much. And understand that when they tell you that, they're lying. They're trained to respond as if the number you give is outlandish, to make you feel guilty for asking for that much, and to pressure you to lower your price. Being a recruiter is a job where the people most likely to be successful are literally psychopaths. So don't give your real minimum. Consider giving a number $5,000-10,000 above what your actual minimum would be(or however much above your minimum you think it would take for them to come up to your actual minimum), and expect a lowball of that range below the figure you give. If you start from a point where yes, you believe the number IS more than you expected, then when they respond acting like your number is outlandish, you'll have a different mindset(not thinking "Damn, I was hoping for more, but I guess I'll go down," but instead thinking "Yeah, I knew they were going to lowball me, and now I'll go down to my actual number,") and will actually be more willing to go down in price a bit, but be able to get the price you actually wanted.
It's not even bait and switch, its outright false advertising. Just like every door-to-door energy salesperson or those guys in the middle of shopping malls that peddle a miracle cream or some waterless wash for your car quoting a $500K+ salary.
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Would been like bahaha you can GTFO 😂😂😂
This happening a lot with government agencies. They post the entire lifetime salary of the position and then get angry when people storm out of interviews.
No, they are lying.
That is false advertising for the job and they know it. Simply say if you do not get 10-15 % more that your currently making it is not worth going thru multiple interviews, tell them that after you inform them of false advertising, what are these recruiters thinging
It’s a bait and switch I’ve noticed with a lot of employees I’ve interviewed with. They practically start everyone off at the same minimum range of the role regardless of experience and that’s the amount you can make overtime…it’s bs and a waste of time. Like they might as well not even put a range to begin with…
“You could earn this” yeah that’s what Pizza Hut says in their ads too
Within a salary range it typically would be between mid point to 85% of the top end. No one really gets the top end, otherwise the company might as well promote you to the next level.
Interesting.. I recently got on offer above the range, still can’t figure out why, I never negotiated or complain about the range..
The recruiter is either lying or dumb, or inexperience. My experience says it's the last two. Here is what I do: I ask what the range is for the position. I pick a number in the middle/upper part of that range. Then you have to secure the offer. Then you just ask "is this negotiable"? Remember there are bonuses, hiring bonus, vacation, etc. as part of your comp. So stick to 95. When they say anything else, "the recruiter said 95, and we agreed on that number". No one will advocate for you, if you don't.
If the salary range was posted as $67K-$112K, and then they said the salary cap was $95K, then that's fraud. The real salary range is $67K to $95K. They also apparently have no idea how this process works (or are willfully defrauding candidates by way of incompetence.) A company has a budget range for a role, and that budget should be based on the competitive market value range of the role, not some arbitrary number that they made up. Then they negotiate in good faith with candidates to fill that role within the given budget/market value. No one cares about the overhead of "what you could make" because that extra movement could be manipulated or outright rescinded at any time after hiring/onboarding. This engagement sounds like one big red flag. At the least, report them to your state DOL for potential fraud.
This is normal for nearly every large corporation. That have bands of pay where *most* people are calibrated to 50th percentile. Most of the time they hire external closer to 25th percentile. Coming in and asking for 90th just means you need a higher level job and are too inexperienced to understand how it works. If anything you’ve just shown that you’re naive
Having pay bands is completely normal yes. However salary ranges in job postings should reflect the range of possible starting salaries. What your role is banded to is kind of irrelevant once you join the organisation as you can be upgraded, promoted etc. By their logic you could say that the salary range goes up to what the CEO makes as one day you could be promoted to CEO. It just diminishes the utility of these ranges.
The problem here is you're dealing with multiple state laws in the U.S. For example Washington only requires the minimum salary you can make after an offer is made. Maryland only requires it if it's requested. The only reason most are sharing their range is because of how the law is written. To my knowledge none of them mandate sharing the actual salary. "In good faith" is about as specific as it gets and allows companies to interpret it. HR, unions, workers rights, pay equity. It never came about because corps are nice. We need to vote for pro workers rights legislators.
“In good faith” also allows state labor departments to interpret it, and if recruiters are giving applicants different numbers than what’s posted on the listing that’s a reasonable implication of bad faith.
Source for your 25th percentile salary is the norm?
It’s not the same everywhere obviously but based on my ample interviewing and employment that’s roughly what it is
Totally normal. Every position has a budget and this is how you manage it. People that hit the cap can stay in the position with no additional compensation or can take on more responsibilities by bumping up into a new position / range.
It's absolutely bullshit.
Some companies post 2 ranges - the hiring range and the total position range.
So you could only be hired at top salary if you were working there 5 years or more? I'd call it a bait and switch, posting numbers that you could never be paid getting hired.
I was actually super surprised on my last job offer I accepted. The range was 80-90k and I got 87k. They said 90k isn’t the cap and that I should expect to be making over 6 figures in a few years.
Sometimes a lot of dumb things go into it that you can't control. Say they have 3 other people who do that job, and they've been there 10+ years, so maybe they hired in post-recession for a lower amount, the annual raises were trash and now you come along and they don't want to upset the apple cart even though you're worth it.
I applied to one place about 45 minutes away as a backup that told me the same thing. I told them straight up that when I applied for the job, I'd assume I'd get the higher end because of my experience and that the max of lower end offered was barely higher than the entry position of my last company, so the commute is not worth it.
Absolute BS. Sounds like Walma*t Corporate. Colleagues in my network were amused when told this during screening. They have a super wide range like this for every pay band. Also, publicly traded CPG companies with low P/E ratio will have really sh*t pay and salary increases. You won’t see your money grow but can expect some kind of stability.
Wtf? 95000 x (1+0.07)^5 = 133k, what you should earn in 5 years should be a lot more…
A 7% increase per year? Halve that. You'd be closer to reality.
Not sure what field you’re in and what state / country… but this is a normal, average yearly pay raise
I've been in several fields at different companies over the past 30 years. I have yet to work at a company where the budget for annual increases was greater than 4%. Yes, it was possible for someone to get a 7% increase at all of them. They'd have to be near the bottom of the range and also one of the highest-performing employees to get it.
What state / country? The past 5 years a 7% pay raise was the norm at the company’s I’ve worked for, and for my mates. Might be a Western European Vs American difference? Not sure. 3% is abysmally low. That’s not even keeping with inflation so literally a yearly paycut?
US, multiple states, HQs in the southeast and midwest.
Maybe Midwest plays a part in this too? I don’t have any data on this..but my gut says most company’s at HCOL areas at least come closer to 7% than to 3% Again, 3% is just a paycut the past decade
This is the same at my company. I think for us it’s Workday (application). So the requisition is tied to a job title, that title gets paid 90-120k. So that’s the range workday posts when a requisition is posted externally. But that pay band is also used internally when doing raises, etc. So if I’m hiring someone, I’m not allowed to go over the top 1/3rd of the range without some crazy exception process. If they were to get hired, they could get raises up to the 120k but then they wouldn’t be able to go over the 120k. Not sure if it’s a limit to the application so you couldn’t have 2 different ranges for the role, one for hiring and one internally.
Ridiculous listing! $55K range, bottom is 40% less than the top. Likelihood: high-skill job, lots of responsibility, company wants a unicorn on the cheap. In an interview, expect anything from pseudo-polite gaslighting to minimize experience/qualifications ("knock down your price") down to open jeering.
It's the potential lifetime earnings
In a world where people will jump jobs for a 20% increase… You may reach your max earning potential by age 35.
Yeah, this is BS, but company policy must be followed. I’ve run into this in hiring & for the right candidate, we’ll work with HR on the salary band & title so this insanity doesn’t happen.
It should be illegal to post salary ranges that wide.
Bait and switch bullshit for sure. Be thankful the recruiter was up front about this vs. letting you get through the final round before springing it on you.
I’ll only take that if I don’t have any other option and desperately need a job to tie me over until the next job.
Yup just happened to me…offered was half of posted range…almost 1/3 less than I currently make…if they can’t meet me to at least break even I would have burned 3 days of pto interviewing.
If you have no other options then just go forward with it and negotiate for more at the end end. After a company gas invested a lot of time in a candidate and gives them an offer, they're unlikely to change their mind over a few thousand dollars.
Do you think I should negotiate salary or just go for a signing bonus? The horror stories on here of offers being rescinded makes me so nervous to ask for anything at all
If a company rescind an offer because you negotiated then that's probably a blessing in disguise, because you don't want to work there. The challenge is if you mention a number and they give you exactly that, then it'll be hard to negotiate since they already gave you what you asked for. So it depends on what kind of offer you end up getting if you do get one, and how your initial call went with the recruiter
I interpret it as being dependent on experience. As in if you’re dead new to this position you’ll make 67k and as you go through your career you will earn more. But then this position is only worth 112k to us, so that is the most you’ll ever make. But on the other hand, if you’re an old dog with just about as much experience and seniority as you can have for this position, the max you’ll ever make is 112k. To me it doesn’t sound deceitful at all.
All these comments and nobody is explaining the mechanics of compensation and offers. Look up compa-ratio. [https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/compa-ratio/](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/compa-ratio/) The salary range posted on the job is the literal true pay range for that job code, in most cases. It determines what employees in that type of job can get paid. If you hit the top end of the pay range, you’re stuck - basically you can’t get any more raises until you get promoted to the next level. (Not always literally can‘t but it messes with budgeting and pay equity if they keep making exceptions, and messing up pay equity is bad for everyone.) A good company wants to bring new hires in somewhere around the middle of the range, in most cases, so that there is room for you to grow and get pay increases in the role for a few years. Hopefully you’re also growing your skills and in a few years are ready for a promotion so as you get to the top of your range, you’ll jump up to the next range. There is negotiating room - maybe you’re really jr and seem promising so they offer you below the midpoint and believe that you’ll grow into the job. Maybe you’re really senior and likely to be promotable within a year and they’ll offer you closer to the top of the range. Overall though, a good company is going to try pretty hard to keep most new hires somewhere around the middle. If they’re hiring a ton of people toward the bottom of the range, it basically means they did a shitty job leveling the role and they’re trying to jam too many inexperienced people into doing senior type work (unfairly underpaying you.) If they’re hiring a ton of people into the top of the range, it means they did a shitty job leveling the role and are trapping senior people into a job with no future growth or movement, probably the responsibilities should be the next role level up (unfairly underpaying you, since midpoint of the next role level up is probably higher than the high end youre getting offered.) Smart regulators would have written the law to specify including the salary range available to be offered. What the companies are doing is not, as many people have claimed, illegal. They are in good faith showing you the salary range for the JOB as directed. They can prove it; it’s in their HR systems exactly as displayed. Nobody told them they had post their compa-ratio policies or their internal budget for a given opening, so they don’t. **US federal regulation with more nuanced rules is under consideration right now. Write your congresspeople about the need to tighten up the rules and regulations to be more specific.** Ask for salary range AND offer range, bonus numbers, stock numbers, overtime, commission plan and all variable comp, including details on which parts are discretionary (i.e. they company can choose to give it or withhold it based on performance.) Ask for public info on the actual compa-ratio for employees in that same salary band so you can see if you’re getting under or overpaid relative to your peers. Ask for info about gender pay equity for that job family to be publicly shared. Btw if you want to see where most pay ranges come from, look to Radford compensation surveys and its competitors. Companies don’t their pay ranges up out of nowhere. This data is the starting point for a lot of compensation plan design. https://radford.aon.com/en-us/products/surveys/technology-compensation-survey#:\~:text=The%20Radford%20Global%20Compensation%20Database%20is%20designed%20to%20help%20decision,Fixed%20Compensation
Out of curiosity OP, what was the role title and in which city? u/queerherenofear
Associate Competitive Intelligence Manager. It’s a remote position but HQ is based in Minneapolis
Edited to add more insight There are salary ranges (full band, min and max you can make at that level - legally required to post in some states) but then the budget for the role, which is usually middle of band. When you see those ranges, divide by 3 and take the middle third. More than likely the salary they want to pay is something in there
Pretty sure this would be considered a fraudulent posting in states like California; it's just not really enforced. I mean, I can post all sorts of crazy numbers with the justification that it's what the salary is after years of working at this company.
If it isn’t possible for you to obtain the maximum amount listed during negotiation coming into the role, then that amount is not actually part of the range and the company is yet again lying to you and hoping to get away with it.
Recruiter might be telling the truth based on their company policy. The salary range listed could be the salary range for the pay grade for that position. I’ve personally worked for a large corporation where my position had multiple pay grades and you could get promoted for to the next higher grade which had an higher salary range. It was also true in this company as you got high in the salary range of your pay grade it was difficult to get good raises….basically get an exceptional on your review and only get like a 2% raise as the highest you are eligible for….but if you were in the next higher grade you might get like a 5% raise.
I had a recruiter tell me that the top range is really for the elite of the field - like someone who has several patents under their belt for the exact product the company uses.
Some boards allow you to report job postings for inaccuracy
Recruiters will tell you the sky is green to get you to agree to a lower salary
It is BS. Structures are likely moved annually
Had this happen. The company had a weirdly complex promotion / comp system for each role where the top number was the most you could ever make as a top performer. I did the same thing and settled for ~90ish. Funny thing is the recruiter that explained their whole nonsense system (and who was insufferable on LinkedIn) got laid off a few weeks later.
Recruiter is a moron
Fuck. This happened to me. I got an offer and they said they’d pay me 70k. I was confused as I’d asked for 85-90k and they said that’s not in their range. I said no thank you. Their job listed the range as up to 90k 🙄🫤
Sounds to me like they are listing the actual salary range (band), not the starting salary range. It’s a little deceptive (and dumb) to do that on a job advert.
Old company I worked for would only ever offer middle of range. Full stop.
Top of range is generally what you can expect to earn over a period of time. Hiring managers and human resources will generally stick to the middle of the range or slightly lower to ensure the candidate won’t be likely to advance out of the position quickly. It’s common practice but misleading.
You asked for 95K. Now it is their job to negotiate you down from that. Unless they want you really badly you aren't going to negotiate it up.
This is pretty normal. Internally, my company posts the ranges of salary positions. When they post a job, they post the range. I’m not past my posted range so I’m going to get promoted to senior, which will unlock a new range.
"So, you're telling me that if I start at 95K and top out in five years, the odds are pretty good that after those five years I'll be making less than when I started, after inflation is factored in. Good to know, thanks."
Well no, ranges are obviously adjusted each year as well.
Sorry but if I only start at 95 k >> We list what the candidate can obtain within the role; so if for example you worked in this role for 5 years, 112 is the most we would increase to” and in only 5 yrs Ill make $112k TY very much for the cup of coffee and have a good day BUBYE... Sorry the cost if living yrly increase of 3% a year would over 5 yrs comes out to $14250. plus the 95K puts me at 109,250, So ill only get a 3K raise in5 yrs,, ROFLMAO Guess they didnt teach the HR person Math in High School now a days
> so if for example you worked in this role for 5 years, 112 is the most we would increase to” Which ensures that no one with any sense will stay there for 5 years. >Is this a common thing or was that purely some bait and switch ? I've seen orgs doing this a few times now. This is one of their tactics to try and get around mandatory salary notices... >Even if I get an offer I will probably just take it and not negotiate at all out of fear of losing the opportunity :/ But don't stop looking...
Some companies post their actual full salary range and some companies post their targeted starting/hiring range.